Bernard Cornwell – 1809 07 Sharpe’S Eagle

As a Captain, Sharpe received ten shillings and sixpence a day. It seemed like a fortune but more than half was deducted for his food and then the officers’ mess demand-ed a further levy of two shillings and eightpence a day to pay for wine, luxury foods, and the mess servants. He paid more for cleaning, for the hospitals, and he knew the sums backwards. They simply did not add up. And now Josefina was looking to him for money. Hogan had lent him money and, added to the contents of his leather bag, he had enough for the next fortnight, but after that? His only hope was to find a rich corpse on the battlefield. A very rich corpse.

Sharpe finished with the books, shut them, laid the quill on the table and yawned as a clock in the town struck four. He opened the Weekly Mess Book again and looked down at the names, wondering morbidly how many would still be there in a week’s time and how many would have the word `deceased’ entered against them. Would his name be crossed out? Would some other officer look at the ledger and wonder who had written fivepence, one shoe-brush`, against the name Thomas Cresacre? He shut the books again. It was all academic. The army had not been paid for a month, and even then they had not been paid up to date. He would give the books to Sergeant Read, who would store them on the company mule and when, and if, the pay arrived, Read would make the deductions from the books and pay the men their handfuls of coins. There was a knock on the door.

“Who is it?”

“Me, sir.” It was Harper’s voice.

“Come in.”

Harper’s face was bleak, his manner formal. “Well, Sergeant?”

“Trouble, sir. Bad. The men are refusing to parade.”

Sharpe remembered his apprehension. “Which men?”

“Whole bloody Battalion, sir. Even our lads have joined in.” When Patrick Harper spoke of `our lads’ he meant the Riflemen. Sharpe stood up and slung on the big sword. “Who knows about this?”

“Colonel does, sir. Men sent him a letter.”

Sharpe swore under his breath. “They sent him a letter? Who signed it?”

Harper shook his head. “No-one signed it, sir. It just tells him that they won’t parade and if he comes near they’ll blow his bloody head off.”

Sharpe picked up the rifle. There was a word for what was happening, and the word was `mutiny’. Simmerson’s flogging of one man in ten could easily change into decimation, and instead of being flogged the men would be stood against the trees and shot. He looked at Harper. “What’s happening?”

“Lot of talk, sir. They’re barricading themselves in the timber yard.”

“All of them?”

Harper shook his head. “No, sir. There’s a couple of hundred still in the orchard. Your company’s there, sir, but the lads in the yard are trying to persuade them to join in.”

Sharpe nodded. The Battalion had been bivouacked in an olive grove which the men called an orchard simply because the trees were laid out in neat rows. The grove was behind a timber yard, a walled yard with just one entrance. “Who delivered the letter?”

“Don’t know, sir. It was pushed under the door of Simmerson’s house.”

Sharpe hurried out of the door. The courtyard of the house was shadowed and silent; most officers were taking the chance of looking at the town before they marched the next day to meet the French. “Are there any officers at the timber yard?”

“No, sir.”

“What about the Sergeants?”

Harper’s face was expressionless. Sharpe guessed that many of the Sergeants were sympathetic to the protest but, like the big Irishman, knew better than the men what the result would be if the Battalion refused to parade. “Wait here.”

Sharpe ran back into the house. The rooms lay cool and empty. A woman looked at him from the kitchen, a string of peppers held in her hand, and quickly shut the door when she saw his face. Sharpe took the stairs two at a time and threw open the door of the room where the Light Company’s junior officers were quartered. Ensign Denny was the only occupant, and the sixteen-year-old was lying fast asleep on a straw mattress.